A Disconnect on Health Care Overhaul

By Peter Brown

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, is a former White House correspondent with two decades of experience covering Washington government and politics. Click here for Mr. Brown’s full bio.

There appears to be a substantial disconnect between what the still-undefined health care overhaul plan working its way through Congress is likely to cost and what Americans say they are willing to pay for and use.

That’s the inescapable conclusion of a Quinnipiac University Poll released this morning that found Americans would be quite happy to let the rich and business pay for the whole package, but aren’t real thrilled about doing it themselves.

While that shouldn’t be a shock, since voters traditionally want more from government than they are willing to pay for in taxes, it doesn’t make the job of those trying to redesign the nation’s health care system any easier.

For if the overhaul could be accomplished by just taxing the rich and corporations – without doing harm to the national economy – President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress likely would already be taking their victory lap.

But the reality that seems to be taking shape on Capitol Hill is that the rest of us – not just business and the rich – will have to chip in if the current price estimates are even close to reality.

Happy With Current Coverage

That could be problematic because the vast majority of Americans think they already have a good deal with their current health care – and interestingly, those on Medicare and Medicaid are even happier than those with private insurance. Americans might be wary of change if they decide their costs will be more than they expected.

The reason why Americans have been supportive of the general idea of a health care overhaul is that they don’t think their friends and neighbors are as fortunate when it comes to their health care situation. This is not an unusual phenomenon. Surveys typically find people much higher on their local schools than those statewide or nationally. In these tough times, they see their own financial situation is much rosier than they do the overall economy.

Nevertheless, for most Americans, a health care overhaul means first cutting costs for people who already have insurance — not covering the roughly 46 million who lack coverage.

How they want to go about doing both is clear as mud.

They think it would be a good thing if there was a government-run health care plan for those Americans who want it. But the vast majority would not trust their families to one if it existed and would stay with their private insurer.

And, they see the idea of just having a government-run system, which some believe would be the ultimate result of the competition between government and private insurers, as a bad thing.

Adding to the Deficit

Because of the public wariness about the program’s cost, Congress is trying to cut the price tag for the proposed health care overhaul from a projected $1.5 trillion to $1 trillion over 10 years. In either case, that’s an awful of money that will certainly add to the already record federal deficits.

Some ideas under consideration on Capitol Hill to solve the problem are quite popular with the masses, such as requiring businesses to pay for their employees’ health care and reducing tax deductions for the rich. Others that might require contributions from most of the population – such as taxing health benefits that workers get from their employers and requiring everyone to have health insurance — aren’t.

The poll found almost half of Americans say they are unwilling to pay any more in taxes than they do now, and another quarter want to fork over just another $500 annually. That’s not much of a public appetite for tax increases to overhaul health care.

It’s difficult to see how those numbers add up, even with a conservative estimate of the overhaul. Covering all the folks who now lack coverage will increase the number of potential patients by about 15%. Meanwhile, $500 a year is between 1% and 2% of the annual average household income.

Think of it this way: Almost three-quarters of Americans say they aren’t willing to pay more than the cost of a cheese pizza a week – with no extra toppings – to pay for health care reform.

Whether that will be enough to finance the kinds of changes percolating within the Beltway is an interesting question.
Write to Peter Brown at peter.brown@quinnipiac.edu.

Comments (5 of 18)

I don't want everyone else to pay for my healthcare, I just don't want leeches getting money out of me because they lack ambition and initiative.. How shameful they must feel, thinking everyone who is successful in life owes them something for um, let me see, NOTHING!!!

9:47 pm July 2, 2009

Business Money Today wrote :

I want to know - that if passed - will our elected officials will be subject to the same healthcare plan as the rest of us or will they have their own, much better plan? Just like their pension plan and our social security!

1:58 pm July 2, 2009

Huzzah! More Clear Thinking wrote :

The late Senator Russell Long had it right: "Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree." Everyone wants the other guy to pay for it. Even if you scraped every dime from the "wealthy" there would not be enough cash around to pay for unlimited, uncapped, all-inclusive lifetime health insurance benefits for every single resident of the United States. This is where this foolish effort will finally come to grief -- when people see exactly how much more in taxes they will have to pay. And since only about 18% of the population consume 80% of the health care tab (This is not a Rush quote. Well documented by the government and other researchers), 82% of us will have to pay much higher taxes to subsidize insurance we may never use.

11:24 am July 2, 2009

jkoerner wrote :

It could be argued that a significant driver of the low U.S. healthcare ranking is driven by our large, indigenous poor population. These people have terrible health statistics compared to the middle class, and I would argue that many European countries do not have this drag on their statistics. Another factor is the influx of immigrants; 50% of hispanic children born in the U.S. will have diabetes some time in their life. Of course the U.S. will look bad compared to the fairly homogeneous Sweden with a small but educated population that is fairly healthy.

I guess my point is that the U.S. ranking is not what the majority of middle class people in this country would consider accurate. I admit the current system could be better, but I am happy with it nonetheless. The health reformers are trying to radically change the system with unpredictable results. I, for one, would be happy without "reform" as the current system works fine for me.

10:35 am July 2, 2009

Steve Andrews wrote :

The cost of health care for all Americans is currently estimated at $2.1 trillion dollars. If the government takes over the cost will be about at least $7,000 a head unless there is cost cutting. Since profit incentive for innovation will be gone the only way to to reduce costs is rationing. Of course the greedy people who think that they are entitled to free health care won't have problem with rationing until they are dying of a disease. I don't know where the liberal talking points about the United States being last in performance comes from but nothing could be further from the truth. We have the best health care industry in the world in terms of quality and access. Ask anyone who works in health care in Detroit or Buffalo about the never ending streams of people that come to American hospitals because they can't get treatment in Canada. The answers is not government control. The answer is eliminating the third party payer system and put the consumer in charge of cost control. You should get the health care that you are willing to pay for. The market would have to respond services people could afford or go out of business.

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Capital Journal is WSJ.com’s unique site for analysis of the political and policy maneuvering in Washington in the era of Barack Obama. It features the Capital Journal columns and occasional other postings by executive Washington editor Gerald F. Seib, and will house Political Wisdom, the Journal’s daily aggregation of the smartest political analysis from around the Internet. Also look for regular columns by Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute and occasional contributions from others.